Zeva'Laell nar Maharum
Zeva'Laell nar Maharum is a quarian freelancer with experience in the medical field. A child of the Maharum, she has not returned to the Migrant Fleet since leaving for her Pilgrimage. Biography Zeva was born in 2159 on the Maharum, a small freighter in the Migrant Fleet. Her father was the ship’s doctor, her mother the helmsman, and due to the small size of the freighter, the crew were a tightly-knit community. Much of Zeva’Laell’s childhood was uneventful, though she did not show much engineering aptitude, instead assisting her father in the freighter’s small medbay. Perhaps the most formative event of the young quarian’s childhood came when she was thirteen, and the Maharum was transiting the largely-uninhabited Khonsu System with the rest of the Flotilla. Due to an error in relay drift calculations, the Maharum entered far closer to the binary system than planned, within range of a long-abandoned planetary defense network on Arsu. Badly damaged by railgun fire, the Maharum was left dead in the water, drifting in a decaying orbit around the binary system. Zeva’s mother was able to pilot the freighter to a crash landing on Azizos, but much of the crew was injured, with many suit breaches caused by the impact and railgun attack. With a Flotilla rescue party with an atmosphere-capable ship several days away due to the nature of the crash, the crew of the Maharum faced death by suit breaches, exposure, or starvation. In a surprise twist of fate, the survivors were instead greeted by the sight of a battered armored personnel carrier, the sole off-road vehicle of a nearby turian colony of Talid’s Rest. The colonists had spotted the crash and sent a team to investigate, and wound up spending a full day driving from their base to the Maharum’s crash site, repeatedly shuttling injured crew and supplies back and forth. Despite the colonist’s own dire straits, having been perpetually low on supplies and with the new arrivals pushing their resources past the breaking point, they still helped treat injured quarians, setting up rudimentary clean rooms for surgery, and provided medical supplies and food. Even after Zeva and the rest of the crew of the Maharum were rescued, the actions of the people of Talid’s Rest stayed with the young Zeva. Despite their own dire situation, the colonists helped the crash survivors without hesitation, an ideal that the young quarian held close to for the rest of her childhood. When the time came for Zeva to take her Pilgrimage, she was prepared to leave, but like many young quarians, did not know when she would return. However, the question remained if indeed she would ever return. Many months of discussion with her family left the young woman with a very different goal in mind for her journey. While most quarians left on their Pilgrimage thinking of what they could do for the Flotilla, and bring benefit back to their own kind, Zeva wanted to set out and see what she could do for the rest of the galaxy. Like herself five years prior, there would always be people that needed helping, no matter the personal cost. While her parents knew she might never return to the fleet, they mostly supported her desire to pay forward the uncountable debt they owed that small colony. Zeva’Laell was dropped off to start her pilgrimage on the junk world of Korlus, and immediately got into trouble. Witnessing another offworlder being shaken down for protection money, she attempted to intervene and found herself cornered by a small gang of extremely angry batarians. For a moment, the young quarian’s journey seemed like it would end before it began until gunfire rang out, and two of the batarians dropped, and the rest fled. Zeva’s rescuer was a certain Tacitus Orolus, the captain of a docked scrap hauler, the Lensman. A turian well into middle-age, Orolus was a veteran of the Relay 314 Incident, as he called the brief war his species had with humanity, and had been given a medical discharge over a decade prior. For what diagnosis, he never said. Orolus, without giving a reason, offered the quarian a job in lieu of a certain death back on Korlus. Without many other options, Zeva accepted, joining his crew. Originally, she worked as a cargo loader, disappointed in how her luck had turned out thus far. However, one day, a container came loose, crushing and badly injuring one of Zeva’s coworkers. Despite her lack of familiarity with alien physiology, she was able to use what she had learned from her father to stabilize the injured crewman before help arrived. After that incident, the ship’s medic, another turian, saw potential in the young quarian, and took her under his wing for more training. From 2177 to 2181, Zeva and the crew of the Lensman traveled the galaxy hauling cargo, as the quarian treated the ship’s crew for their many maladies and injuries, and volunteered at med clinics when on leave. Zeva’s adventures came to an end, however, when a near-death salarian was brought into one such clinic. Before the salarian died, he described his attacker - a turian almost perfectly matching the description of her captain, Tacitus. In a massive break from quarian deference to one’s captain, she took heed of the warning and went to confront her captain. Prior to this discovery, her captain hadn’t shown any inclinations towards violence, but he had, peculiarly, left on his own for days at a time on the Lensman’s shore leave stops. However, she was left with no doubt, once she returned to the ship, and confronted Tacitus in his cabin. The turian, who at that point had amassed a prolific career as a serial killer among the many ports the Lensman visited, attacked Zeva, trying to smash her faceplate in with his pryknife. Desperate, Zeva was able to free the knife and stab her Tacitus in the eye, before fleeing from the ship with the captain’s prized submachine gun, vanishing into the depths of the port’s seedy underbelly. Once the Lensman undocked and left, with the fate of Tacitus unknown, Zeva bought a berth on the next possible freighter as far away from there as possible, badly shaken by her experience. Over the next year, Zeva made her way to the edge of the galaxy, and to Joab, working in the medbay of a small archeological outpost, before deciding to return to Korlus, many years later, and a changed woman. Without much to go on, and running low on credits, she began to look for work, always checking over her shoulder for Tacitus, and keeping her knife close. Physical Description As she is never outside of her sealed suit, Zeva’s appearance beneath is a closely-guarded secret. However, her suit is black and silver, with added knee and elbow pads, an armored plate on the chest, and an armored blue visor that changes color when viewed from different angles. A brightly colored, patterned headscarf adorns her helmet, and the same cloth is also wrapped around her right thigh. The rest of her suit is black and silver, with brown leather pouches and straps. She also has a small trauma kit in a pouch on her back. She has a jumpy demeanor, bred from a quick response time needed of a ship’s medic, and from that lingering fear that Tacitus might return. Since her face is covered, Zeva is extremely expressive when talking with her hands. Armament Ziva utilizes an Eakaris submachine gun in combat, as well as her trusty pryknife and an M-5 Phalanx heavy pistol. Her omni-tool comes equipped with the Combat Abilities Overload and Cryo Beam, her armor is installed with Jump Jet technology, and she typically brings along Supply Pylons just in case. Category:Quarians Category:The Maharum Category:Characters Category:Medics Category:The Lensman